Flavour Monks Drop (Black Licorice)
ConcreteRiver
Setup: Recoil w/ flavor barrel, Dual 15 wrap 26g 3mm Nifethal 70 coils @.17 ohms. 60w power, 450F temp limit. Full Cotton Wicks.
Testing: FM Drop @ %3, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 21 days.
Flavor Description: Black Licorice all the way. Definitely a candy flavor. Initial impressions are really anise forward, but becomes a lot more mellow after the first couple draws. Once it settles in, balanced anise notes with a solid molasses type of sweetness. Fuller mouthfeel, with some actual density. Has a tiny bit of sour tinge to it solo, but overall the most accurate licorice candy I've come across.
Inhale has a slight sourness, with deeper building black licorice sweetness. Mouthfeel has a moderate density, not thin or astringent. Exhale has heavy anise top notes. The base sourness makes it taste a bit more like licorice root than straight bakery anise. Deeper molasses kind of sweetness builds and gets more pronounced toward the back half of the exhale. Moderate density, with some actual body. Sweetness level overall seems pretty appropriate for a llcorice candy. Lingering, slightly medicinal black licorice candy taste, with that anise kind of coating your mouth.
Off-flavors: Slight sourness I'm not a fan of. Really shows up as your palate tunes out the spicier licorice notes.
**Throat Hit:**Light, mostly from chest tightness on the inhale. Definitely numbs your mouth a bit as well.
Uses & Pairings: I'm assuming you like black licorice, because this is never not going to taste like black licorice. Really solid as a solo, with maybe a touch of sucralose to balance out that sour note. I'd go so far as to call this the black licorice candy flavor to beat, so use this accordingly. Good base for something like a good and plenty. No earthly idea how you'd do it, but would work well as the licorice component in a liquourice all-sorts flavor.
After that, it gets weird. I'm a huge fan of licorice ice cream (shoutout to Molly Moon's in Seattle.) Herbal pairings are cool, like horehound or a natural spearmint. For fruit flavors I like apple, raspberry, and coconut.
Notes: S&V concentration testing, 1% is pretty blah. Some light sourness and anise tingle without much body or sweetness. 2% is mostly anise, still no body and the sweetness is really subdued. 3% is still a bit thin. 4% has a heavier licorice hit, and that sweetness is dead on. 5% is getting pretty intense, and by 7% this is just too much for me. I'd recommend mixing with this at 3% as a flavor component in a more complex mix with fruit or creams, and 5% as the primary note in a black licorice candy.
Main competitor for this is probably FA Black Touch, but that's definitely more an herbal licorice tea kind of flavor. This works better as a more realistic and complex black licorice candy.
Second Opinions:
Not a whole lot. Only reviews I can find are off the flavormonks website.
First one is from the english version:
"This one is really nice, not too strong I’ve made a delicious recipe, 30 ml. drop 10%, lemon 4%"
Next two are from the dutch version, via google translate:
"blissfully delicious taste of sweet licorice. aniseed makes it nice and cool on hot days. Ratio of 10% is more than adequate."
"There is little to say about it. It tastes like what the name says, namely, drop, without any weird off-flavors. So this is a flavor for the real licorice lovers."